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Hewlett-Packard’s decision to move toward Linux and Windows servers rather than trying to port HP-UX to X86 architecture sends yet another signal about the declining demand for pure Unix skills.

“Companies no longer have questions about using the open source Linux for mission-critical applications,” says Robert Byron, principal consultant for information technology search at WinterWyman Search, echoing HP’s rationale. “This is where companies are going now, for various reasons: It’s stable, it’s secure, it’s open source.”

Byron says Linux skills are in high demand. Unix skills, not so much. And those with only Unix skills just aren’t that marketable anymore. “For every 10 Linux opportunities, we may have one Unix opportunity,” he says. Many job posts ask for both.

Indeed, in a survey of more than 2,000 hiring managers earlier this year, 81 percent said that hiring Linux talent was a priority in 2012, and 85 percent reported having difficulty finding qualified Linux professionals.

Yet Unix Lives On

However, Dan Olds, founder of Gabriel Consulting Group, argues that Unix isn’t going away. He’s conducted data center surveys among companies for six years and doesn’t see any big move away from Unix. “It’s not growing quickly, that’s absolutely true,” he says. “But it’s kind of like mainframes—more capacity is being shipped than is being turned off.”

Still, he adds, “the days when companies had a guy just for Solaris or AIX or HP-UX—those days are over, except for the largest companies, and it’s happening with them, too.” Though he doesn’t see Unix flat-out sinking, Olds does agree that Unix skills alone aren’t enough anymore.

You May Already Be Prepared

“Back in the day—like 10 years ago or so—you could be a specialist with deep knowledge in just one narrow area,” Olds observes. “But today, shrinking data center headcounts and a move toward more packaged solutions means that IT workers need to have a skill set that’s more oriented toward business solutions rather than a particular platform.”

That means they need to be able to demonstrate skills with Linux, Windows, plus at least a few of the major virtualization suites such as vSphere, Hyper-V, Xen or KVM. Beyond that, they should focus on cross-platform skills such as security, ID management and systems management.

Many Unix folks already perform some of these skills, he said, but don’t realize they can sell them to a future employer.

“If you’ve done anything like providing smartphone or tablet access on a Unix server, that’s an important skill that should be on your resume,” he said.

Linux Roles Evolving, Too

Linux pros, too, are focused on keeping up with what Olds calls the “expansive set of skills” required today. In addition to virtualization, WinterWyman’s Byron recommends learning more about configuration management software, scripting languages such as Ruby, Python and Perl, and cloud computing.

With automation, cloud computing and virtualization, the five Linux systems administrators of today might be replaced with one or two DevOps engineers who can keep everything running and also support the development side, Byron explains.

In some recent months, Dice’s Linux Talent Community has seem some heated discussions about what’s hot and what’s not, with views about necessary skills all over the map, notes Rob Reilly, the community guide’s. He believes most systems administrators already have added Linux to their tool kits, and notes it’s a common operating system for app developers as well.

Effect on Salaries

Whatever changes are going on, the market value for both Unix and Linux skills hasn’t changed in the past 12 months, according to David Foote, CEO and co-founder of Foote Partners. The research firm tracks salaries paid for 308 non-certified skills, including both Linux and Unix, and 268 IT certifications. Operating systems including HP-UX, AIX and Solaris are among those non-certified skills. Foote’s most recent report shows no change in demand for OS skills in the quarter ended October 1.

In terms of certifications, four of IBM’s AIX were certifications among those that have declined 10 percent or more in value. One was the IBM Certified Systems Expert, AIX and Linux v2, which supports the POWER6 and POWER7 environments. So, Foote says, Linux might not be the beneficiary, Foote said in an interview. Meanwhile, Linux Professional Institute certification Level 2 is down 25 percent in market value in the past 12 months, and Level 3 is flat for the same period.

“Simply possessing an operating systems skill, or 0ny skill for that matter, is not necessarily enough to be attractive in the marketplace. It’s what you’re qualified to do with that skill that matters most to employers,” Foote emphasizes. “What set of solutions have you applied you skills to? What problem are you solving?”

A Unix or Linux pro who specializes in open source analytics, cloud computing, or who has expertise in a specific domain such as finance, marketing, or operations, or a specific customer niche or industry niche brings more to the table, he adds.

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Comments

I don’t get it. There is *very* little difference between UNIX and Linux! You get the same shells, installed editors, and commands in /sbin and /bin. In fact there’s a bigger difference in whether it’s an AT&T or BSD derived flavor. And you only need to use different switches. AIX has SMIT, but that’s a convenience rather than a core utility.

In a resume you’re better off describing the kind you’re best familiar with, like RHEL, SUSe, HPUX, etc.. They’re all “UNIX”!

I do not know why these businessman are so greedy and uneducated, they are spending their time on useless “research” I guess just find out the ways to deprive the US citizens from their jobs with fake excuses so that they can simply fool the Government to get the permission to hire “under educated” people from slum countries with full of fake experience who basically follow their nonsense definition of the “technology” 
The matter of the fact is that there is NO big difference in UNIX and in LINUX as Linux has been derived from Unix and its name “Linux” coined because it is “Like Unix”, Linux is same as Unix but it is mostly open source OS, and that’s all!
The concepts and command structure is common between Unix and ‘Unix Like’ Linux systems.
Anyone who is working in one of these OS can easily be switched over to the other within no time.

There you go again, Does she really know about the Technology stuff in detail? I can’t believe
that dice wants her to post a ZONK stuff to give a false impression on the Technical area where she has no idea at all !!!!
But again who will follow the dice stuff any way r’t? 🙂

Zonk, rather pick on Susan, if you don’t like the story why don’t you focus on what her sources are saying? Her job is to take a subject and talk to people who are experts in the area to find out their opinions and present them to you. That’s what she’s done here. That aside, why not share the points you disagree with? I think that could kick off a debate that would be helpful to a lot of people. Thanks.